The 79-year-old author of blues-based poems, plays and criticisms died Jan. 9 of an undisclosed illness. Actor Danny Glover was expected to officiate Saturday's service at Newark Symphony Hall.

Baraka's supporters considered him a genius and a prophet. He helped found the Black Arts Movement in 1965 and left a legacy of community activism in his native Newark and elsewhere.

Critics have denounced him as homophobic and anti-Semitic. He was named New Jersey's poet laureate in 2002, but the position was eliminated following criticism of Baraka's Sept. 11 poem "Somebody Blew up America.